The Strange Worlds of Fate

Strap in, folks, we're about to enter our final week of the campaign. Today we're bringing you a a two-fisted, double-topic update! (In fact we're posting it a little bit early, because someone has assured us it's Monday somewhere, and we're the trusting sorts.)

Strange Tales Told at $325k

15-Second Version:Jess Nevins is a renowned dual-classed pulp nerd/research librarian who has written a massive Spirit of the Century supplement that bridges the gap between Spirit and Shadow called Strange Tales of the Century. With your help and funding, we'll make it Fate Core compatible, too, and give you some guidance for playing Spirit using Fate Core. Now skip on down to the next header!

Some time ago we were looking at Jess Nevins, and saying, "Jess… let's make some music together." See, Jess is a fellow gamer, but more than that, he's a nerd's nerd when it comes to his mad research librarian skills. Jess Nevins has read more pulp magazines than anyone alive or dead.

Jess's journey through the pulp magazines of the world has resulted in The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes (P.S. Publishing, 2013), The Pulps: A History (forthcoming), and a variety of articles for the web site io9.com. He has also written the Alan Moore-endorsed annotations to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the seminal steampunk reference work The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, the Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes, and has been a Guest Informant on Warren Ellis's blog.

This long, strange trip has also resulted in our next stretch goal: the much-anticipated Strange Tales of the Century supplement for Spirit of the Century! When we kicked this project off with Jess, we told him we'd like to see about 60-70,000 words on it. He turned in 200,000, every one of them well-researched and utterly delicious.

Strange Tales of the Century mixes Jess's real-world research together with the supposed "real life" chronicling of the exploits of the Century Club in the pages of a pulp magazine bearing the same name as the supplement. Better yet, it will act as a "bridge" between the Spirit and Shadow timeframes, by giving timeline updates to 1935 (as the Spirit Centurions truly come into their own) and 1951 (as the Shadows begin to be the stronger force in the world).

As well, Strange Tales tours the pulps of the world, featuring many dozens of character types taken from not just US or English language pulps, but from all the world has had to offer in pulp, complete with "recipes" for how to build those kinds of characters in your game, including new stunts for the Spirit of the Century RPG.

Should you fund this stretch goal at $325,000, we'll add even more material to Strange Tales of the Century. All the new stunts will be presented with Fate Core compatible versions as well, and we'll include a few extra pages on "Playing Spirit of the Century the Fate Core Way" -- not a full conversion, but a guide for how to play games in the Spirit of the Century universe using the Fate Core ruleset.

And -- do we even have to say it? -- everyone at $10 and up will get any electronic versions produced for zero more dollars. In short, this stretch goal will practically double the wordcount you're already set to receive… so let's make this happen, people!

And with that, we have our final Spirit of the Century-driven stretch goal. Now on to another matter…

Splitting the Worlds

15-Second Version:We're splitting the Fate Worlds book into two smaller books (but they'll each still be pretty sizable). You're going to get exactly what you were going to get before, for the same price as before, it'll just have two covers on it instead of one. There's no need to change your pledge if you're already getting the Worlds in print.

Here's the deal. As we've reviewed the trajectories of the twelve expansions we have slated to go into the Fate Worlds book, we started realizing exactly how big that was likely to be. We gave our writers a target of 10,000 words each, with a hard cap of 15,000. At the kind of words-per-page density we've got in Fate Core, that would give us a book between 480 and 720 pages long!

That's too big even for us, and we suspect it's too big for you. So here's our plan of attack: we're going to create two Worlds books, and sell them to you for the same total price that we put on the original proposed single Worlds book: $30. That's right -- each of the two Worlds books will come in at only $15, and it will mean you'll have a more comfortable time carrying your World of choice to the game table.

For this Kickstarter, we're offering this as a two-book package, priced same as before -- $30 total -- so if you were in for the single Worlds book in the first place, there's no need to change your pledge.

Here's why the two-book package instead of offering them individually: we won't know what the best mix is for each of the two Worlds books until after the Kickstarter is over. We want to balance each book so it's roughly the same page count, and that requires seeing how each of these things looks in layout. The upshot is, for any one given expansion, we can't tell you whether it would appear in Worlds I or Worlds II, at least not while you'd still be making a purchase decision prior to the end of the Kickstarter. So there you have it!

We're excited about making this split -- thanks to you and your backing we have taken the original notion of backing a book, and now we are creating line of Worlds books, starting with these two-which-were-one. We've really looked at it, and we know the split will make for a better and more portable experience for those of you (like us) who groove on the paper-book experience. At the end of the day it really is the best of both Worlds!

Superbacker

I'll give that data out soon, David. I THINK it's going to be $15 for the novel (shipping towards the end of 2013), and $40 for Strange Tales (shipping somewhere in the middle of the year), but I need to double-check the pricing on both.

Fred - please let us know as soon as you can about "buying in" on print versions of the novel and Strange Tales (and anything else you've already announced that you think such a timeframe is reasonable on).

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be willing to throw more money at the kickstarter for more product - and I'm certainly willing to plop down dough in advance to ensure that Strange Tales gets the KS green light.

A lot more interested in these stretch goals then the young adult! Glad to see something for being Spirit to Fate Core - and more additions to Fate Core. The World book being that big as someone who LOVES to read settings and such is really good news for me!

Superbacker

We have to be extremely sure of the final form of things and their likely price points well before we are in a position to predict that stuff with high accuracy. For a number of our stretches that is not possible during the timeframe of the Kickstarter. And for those stretches where it is -- we haven't funded those yet. :) I'm contemplating offering a print option for the novel once we hit $300k and Strange Tales when we hit $325k.

Ooh...this looks really really cool! Also, does anyone know where I could find The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes or The Pulps: A History (when it's available)? Not seeing them at Amazon or B&N, nor at any of the PS Publishing pages I've found so far.

Jess is grand! Beginning with some victoriana, adding some pulp, and delving into the golden age of comics I just hope he finds the time to bring to light some silver age too. And more RPGs, of course!

Superbacker

Superbacker

Over the course of this KS, Fate has gone from a game I'm really interested in to comprising a significant portion of my RPG library, and I couldn't be happier. I'm going to have to recruit multiple gaming groups just to run all the settings that are bubbling up in my head, let alone what's going to be published!

Fred and crew: you are all amazing and this update is a layer of fondant with frosting on top of that on top of the worlds best cake.

Superbacker

Superbacker

We won't be giving Strange Tales away to the kickstarters if we don't hit goal, but we will be publishing it, somehow, some way, without Fate Core stuff if we do not reach $325k. (Trending suggests we will hit $325k, that said.)